


Postcard To Reality

by kpkndy, theCorvid



Series: a good man is hard to find [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, Emergenji, F/M, M/M, McHanzo - Freeform, Mission Fic, Multi, Nervous Sex, Pining, Slow Build, Young Love, a good man is hard to find
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 20:56:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9202895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kpkndy/pseuds/kpkndy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/theCorvid/pseuds/theCorvid
Summary: Angela is sent with Jesse to Hanamura with a plan. Circumstance has something else in mind.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The day is finally here! This series has been in the works for a while but we're finally kicking it off with some good, wholesome young love/lust/intrigue.
> 
> This was masterminded and made possibly almost entirely by my love Corvid, and I dedicate this to her, because friends, like diamonds, are forever. 
> 
> Here's a postcard I slaved over in photoshop. Send it to your friends!  
> http://jfk-d.tumblr.com/post/155409468544/i-came-i-saw-i

Bright, built-up city passes circuitously by one window. Out of the other gleams a seafront bluer than the sky.    
  
Jesse stares absently at the carriage floor as they all lean, lazily, to accommodate for the wide corner they turn on. He’s lax in the seat, an elbow anchoring him on the table before him. He’d sleep, but he makes a point of witnessing the journey. He’s never been on a train like this before.    
  
Across from him, Angela is sat upright, one hand keeping her sudoku book flat as she hold the pencil with the other, tapping the end of it occasionally against her wrist. All of her looks nervous, and Jesse feels practically exhausted by every second he spends looking at her.   
  
It’s a first time for Angela, too, he supposes. She’s never run an op before.    
  
He thinks to ask her, looking at the floor, before Angela speaks, in a calm voice that is betrayed by the tapping of her pencil. “Something wrong?”    
  
He shrugs with one shoulder, and then shakes his head. “Naw, not wrong.” Using the elbow on the table, he drags himself up to sitting better, and yawns. “I jus’ thought this part’d be more --impressive.”    
  
When they’d outlined this part of the journey --the midnight anonymous drop off in a field, practically, and a walk in the dark to some outlying town to catch a train, Jesse had been practically excited. Watching the sun come up at a cool two hundred and twenty four miles an hour had seemed like a peace he’d never been afforded before. Special somehow.    
  
But it’s all going past so fast that he can’t really see anything, and the sun is behind them --invisible but warm, and Jesse feels a little let down, frankly.    
  
Angela is quick to remind him. “This isn’t a vacation, you know.” And it’s so perfect, from her, that Jesse has to smile, leaning back in his seat.    
  
“Y’wouldn’t know a vacation if it landed in your lap, Angie.” He tells her, crookedly, trying to be playful but only exacerbating her, it seems.    
  
She straightens and dips her head slightly like she does only when she’s shy of something, looking up at him with these innocent blue eyes that hold all the power in the world to him, right now. “Jesse, please.” She says, earnestly. “I’ve never been on --done anything like this, an --and I don’t want--”   
  
“Yeah, I hear ya.” Jesse nods. He leans over to throw a hand over hers in some kind of show of solidarity. Angela doesn’t resist it, but she holds his gaze for a few more seconds, testing him trying to demonstrate how serious she is. Jesse thinks that if she’s any more serious it might just kill her.    
  
Just to get the last word, he smiles again, and says, “I’ll be good as gold. Promise.”    
  
He turns his head to see the dense, metallic gleam of the city dissipating into smaller, fewer buildings, slowly beginning to blend with the lay of the land. His head falls back against his seat as he feels the train shift, gliding uphill effortlessly, feeling easy and weightless: a flash of red running over railway sleepers.    
  
The silence would be nice, if it weren’t for the tension in Angela’s form. Jesse can’t bear to look at her, fearing her nervous energy is contagious, and has his head turned towards the fading city when he speaks, “What d’you s’pose Hanamura’s like?”    
  
It’s supposed to a be a nice, breezy distraction, but he knows it hasn’t worked the moment Angela snaps her head up to look up in a sudden, stricken sort of mortification. “Tell me you read the doss--”   
  
“Yes, I read the damn dossier.” He grumbles, shifting in the seat and waving her off with a hand. “Believe it or not, I’ve been on an op before, y’know. I jus’ meant--..” Sighing, he look out at where the buildings had been moments before, having crumbled into nature. The proud rock of a mountain slope sticks out between deep greens now. “I meant, like, what you imagine it’ll be. Not what it looks like on a postcard or somethin’.”    
  
Suddenly a it less the accuser, Angela says, “Oh,” and relaxes, just a bit. Jesse only notes it because he’s been waiting on it --the way he back curves so she’s more forward in her seat, looking away for a second to write a number in the current puzzle. “I apologise. This is all very important to me.”    
  
It’s difficult to hold anything against Angela for very long, so Jesse lifts his fingers in a small gesture. “I know.” he says, gently, before sitting up a little more. “Y’know, I heard there’s gonna some big festival.”    
  
Angela’s mouth quirks slightly, like she can’t help but laugh. He knows he’s probably being predictable, but Jesse never thought he’d see much beyond the red rock of home, and then maybe a jail cell or something. Yet, here he is, halfway across the world, barely able to crack a smile before the girl from halfway across the other side of the world is saying, “We’re not here for a party.”    
  
“No harm in blendin’ with the locals.” He tries to sound nonchalant. “It’ll be on our last day, too, y’know. Might as well end on a high.”    
  
Angela’s eyes roll and she turns her head towards where the ocean was a few moments ago. “We’ll be waiting on the extraction, then.” She says, as if strained, and Jesse grins.    
  
“S’not a ‘no’.”   
  
She looks back at him, smiling, but a little tiredly, “Jesse--”   
  
“Awright, awright.” He holds up a hand in defeat, canting his head in a submissive gesture. But, just to make sure she knows she hasn’t quite won, he adds, “We’ll talk ‘bout it later.”    
  
The rest of the journey journey passes in silence, but given that it’s only ten minutes more, Jesse lives with it. He watches the passing greenery swell once more into vast, incredible buildings, barred by a vast, high wall that a few pagodas peek over. Outside of it, clean, modern skyscrapers lean in towards the walls as if to listen, and Jesse wonders if he’s privy to some wonderful secret by token of just entering the city.    
  
As they slow to a halt, he notes Angela sitting up, too, taken in by the breeze that abducts clouds of pink, blooming cherryblossom and scatters it downwind, painting the windows for a few surreal and beautiful moments. It passes, and they look at eachother, astonished.    
  
“What was that?” He asks her, a little bewildered, twisting in his seat to get a look at the platform that they’re approaching, city now on either side of them.    
  
Angela brings a worried hand to her mouth as she collects herself. She takes stock of the suitcase on the seat besides her, and whispers, breathless with excitement, “We must be here.”    
  
-   
  
Jesse holds his travel guide up at an arm’s length.    
  
On the cover stands a tall, proud building, and beyond the length of his arm, in the  distance, the same building stands, thousands of times grander, larger and more intricate. It dwarfs not only the book but also all of the people that walk to and fro in the shadow of it. Gaps of sunlight come through in radiant beams through the upturned edges of roof tiers, accented in red, that the book says are called ‘artichoke leaves’.    
  
“Guess I stand corrected.” Jesse whistles, gently, his arm dropping back by his side. “Looks jus’ like the damn postcard.”    
  
“It’s beautiful.” At his side, holding his arm with more concern than affection or friendliness, he hears her speak with a slightly airiness, as if she’s allowing herself to be taken with it. Only for a moment, of course, before her attention is redirected. “We should get to where we’re staying.”    
  
It’s coming out of midmorning and into the swing of the day, the intensity of the sunlight fully developed by now, and the city in front of them bustling and lively. The people are dressed colourfully and tastefully, wordlessly accommodating one another in a way that Jesse recognises as distinctly un-american, but what purloins his attentions more than that is the cleanliness of it.    
  
He looks at his feet and beyond them but finds no trace of old gum, or litter. The paving is clean and bright, like new carpet, and he has to wonder if the locals take their damn shoes off before they walk across it.    
  
Angela is tugging at him slightly, but he keeps his feet planted where they are. “It’s so clean.” He says, intelligently. “Y’could eat off the damn street.”    
  
“But we won’t.” Angela says, quickly, trying to drag him gently away. “Let’s stay on schedule.”   
  
He doesn’t fight her, this time, walking away with her but looking over his shoulder at the tall, majestic building as he wanders beyond the reach of it’s shadow. “C’mon, Angie, don’t you wanna have a look around?” Turning his head, he looks down at her with his most winning smile.    
  
“Jesse.” She begins, sounding slightly less patient than before.    
  
“What?” He slows down, sticking his chin out impudently. “Hotel’s not gonna disappear or anythin’. We got time.” It’s futile, and he knows it, as Angela basically wheels him away, deaf to his persuasions, and Jesse mostly lets her without protest. It’s not like she’s taking him out of the city, and there’s time to convince her.    
  
She leads him away from the main square and down a busy street. Clearly a commercial district of some kind, with wide streets that are just as clean. He has to wonder if they’re new. If this place has been erected overnight for show, because Jesse can’t believe that the dossier spoke of a clan history that spanned over a century when everything looks like it’s just come fresh out of some packaging.    
  
The buildings seem to shrink in fear of the main square, but build back up the further away from it they go until highrises and skyscrapers are leaning in to listen to the japanese that’s scattering through the crowds. Jesse is mesmerised, turning his head to listen to snatches and pockets of it, the language strange and beautiful, vowel sounds that he doesn’t recognise in an order he’s never heard before.    
  
Angela has taken his hand, at this point, pulling him through crowds and throngs that grow in giddiness. He’s entirely distracted by the place, the smell of foreign, cooking food qn spices he isn’t familiar with. Bright, neon lights and startlingly modern infrastructure looking every bit as clean as the rest of the place and blending effortlessly with the older architecture. The place looks timeless, and ageless. Jesse’s never seen somewhere more beautiful.    
  
Distracted for too long, he feels Angela tug him harder and he lifts his free hand to hold onto his plain hat as he pushes through the people to find her again. She looks a little breathless, but doesn’t hesitate to stop, leading him down a smaller sidestreet off to the left where the crowd thins drastically and the shops look less pristine and important.    
  
Angela takes another sharp turn halfway down the street into another narrow section, narrower than before, and much more residential. There’s a small, unlit neon sign that she seems to take a few seconds to consider, before heading towards.    
  
“This must be it.” She says, gesturing to the clean but nondescript building that stands less impressive than the others they had been, but still proud enough that Jesse’s glad to see it. He’s heard agents talk, before, about getting grifted by HQ on some covert ops, being forced into crummy hotels or to sleep rough in cold or dangerous cities. Jesse thinks he could sleep in the street and he’s probably rest easier than any bed he’s ever been in.    
  
“Ain’t this place somethin’.” He murmurs to Angela, as they make their way towards the building door.    
  
“It certainly is.” She says, and it seems clear to him that there’s something other than wonder in her voice.    
  
In the foyer, the desk is vacant, and no concierge is present, but there are automated check-in machines that have Angela goes to, selecting her interface in German and checking in with minimal fanfare. The machine beeps as it spits out a keycard --old-fashioned but sweet, beeping ‘ _ Danke Ihnen, Kommen Sie wieder!’ _ .   
  
The keycard is for room 221, and Angela take the stairs, typically, leading them up four flights to a corridor that makes a perfect square. The room is straightforward to find and the card unlocks it easily. Angela steps inside and Jesse closes the door behind them, watching her as she sets down on the bed wordlessly with her case.    
  
So begins the routine.    
  
Jesse begins with the ceiling light, unscrewing the bulb and inspecting the socket, dropping it onto the bed before going to both beside lamps and doing the same. He goes into the adjoining bathroom and takes the bulb out there until all of the light sockets are bare and the bulbs are by Angela’s lap.    
  
She looks at him, wordlessly, and nods, before taking the first one apart and inspecting it.    
  
Jesse leaves her to it, and takes a small, thin flashlight, the size and dimension of a HB pencil from his bag, and going over to the plugsockets closest to the door to inspect them. He works outwards from there as Angela works over the lightbulb, the safe ones placed on one side of her lap, the unchecked ones in the pile Jesse made at her left.    
  
After that, he checks beneath the seats of the chairs, and the desk, and the bed. He checks the showerhead, and then uses another function on the flashlight the test the walls, looking for hollow parts or anything that reacts to the light.    
  
All in all it takes about fifteen minutes, with Jesse watching over Angela anxiously for the last few until she places the last bulb, intact once more, with the rest. Declared safe.    
  
Looking up, she nods, “Clear.” Her voice sounds slightly anxious, but he trusts her judgement. She’s not the type to make hasty errors.    
  
“Well.” Jesse leans back in the chair. He puts his hands on his thighs. “You wanna drink b’fore we start puttin’ this place back together?”   
  
Angela shoots him a disapproving look as she leans over to unpack. She takes out a few layers of plain, unassuming clothing, unfolding sections to find parts of a comm that have been unassembled carefully. It takes her less than a minute to reassemble it for the scattering of parts hidden like debris in her shirts and underwear, and then it’s operational in her hand.    
  
Clicking it once, she speaks into it in a clear, professional voice that doesn’t do the softness of her nature justice. “In position. Rooms clear.”    
  
They’re not expecting an immediate response. Jesse isn’t alarmed by the silence on the other line, and stays leaned back in his seat, yawning, tired from the night before. He goes to the window at the other end of the room and peers outside of it, hoping to get a view of the city beyond, or maybe of the square before, but seeing nought much beyond other buildings, just as tall and anonymous.    
  
They’re still amazing to Jesse. He’s never seen a city like it, and part of him thanks the boss-man immensely for giving him the opportunity to ever see it. He turns away from the window and back to Angela, who is re-folding her shirts dutifully.    
  
“Hell of a place, ain’t it?” He says, not moving from the window. “I don’t know how they can keep it lookin’ so clean.”    
  
“Ironic, really.” She says, finishing with a soft, pastel sweater and putting in the neat pile on her lap. Jesse moves away from the window and to his own bag, pulling out a packet of cigarettes he’d been clever enough to buy at the train.    
  
“Whaddya mean by ‘ironic’?” He asks her, putting one between his lips, the foreign thing skinnier than he’s used to, and a lot neater. He spent a whole childhood rolling cigarettes for older kids and deadlock and they’re still no good, to this day.    
  
Angela looks up at him in an apprehensive sort of warning. “Don’t light that in here.” She says, almost automatically, before remembering the question. “It’s ironic that the money they use to keep the city so pleasant is hardly likely to be clean.”    
  
Jesse’s head tilts a little. He moves the cigarette from his mouth to behind his ear, and shrugs. “Hey, money’s money. Least it’s goin’ t’wards somethin’ pretty, right?”    
  
Angela doesn’t reach for the next shirt. She seems to consider for a second, before responding, sounding kind, somehow, when she says, “The end doesn’t always justify the means. Certainly not here.” He looks over and the window and says, “The city isn’t built for its people. It’s built for protection from the law. I have no illusions that these citizens are quite secondary to the commerce here.”    
  
Jesse shrugs again, even though he’s not being looked at. “Small price to pay, I reckon.”    
  
Angela chews her lip momentarily, and looks so terribly earnest when she sighs. “You really think so? Even if it means being complicit in --in--”   
  
“In crime?” Jesse finishes for her. “Sure beats the hell outta gun-runnin’, that’s for sure.”    
  
She looks up at him and blushes very slightly, only just realising the implication of her words. It’s hardly the worst thing Jesse has ever heard. He knows Angela doesn’t have any real malice in her --not a bit of real ire even deep in her bone marrow, so he can laugh it off, easily, taking the cigarette from behind his ear and playing with it for a few seconds.    
  
As he crosses the room to get the the tiny, railed-off balcony, she looks up and says, “I didn’t mean--”   
  
He smiles at her genially, but sounds ever-so-slightly curter when he says. “You don’t gotta apologise t’me, Angie.”    
  
He leaves her with that, going out onto the railed-off balcony, and lighting the cigarette he’d been fiddling with, looking out onto the built-up city and into the distance beyond. Somewhere in the distance, he can see the strident pink of cherry-blossoms.    
  
It’s like a movie, he thinks, surveying the wonders before him like it’s his own private kingdom. Just like a movie.    
  
-   
  
They set up monitoring equipment before the afternoon. Sunset draws in with no activity.    
  
The dead drop is expected at some point no later than Thursday, and expected in the next 36 hours. Jesse wonders why they don’t just wait to intercept it, but the boss-man had been very clear about it being more dangerous that way. About how it’d be telegraphing the whole operation. They’re not there to obtain the information. That’s been taken care of already by some real experts.    
  
No, they’re in Hanamura to collect a different kind of intel.    
  
It’s amazing, Jesse thinks, that a thousand miles away Blackwatch already knows whats and the whys --but they have no idea what’s signalling the dead drops. If it’s somebody sticking gum on a lampost or a newspaper left on a park bench or the tallest hotel in the city hanging a red towel over it’s balcony.    
  
Whatever it is, all the sites of interest are visible from the room they’ve been given. Tomorrow, they’ll take shifts on the ground, out of the hotel room to observe the sites without arousing suspicion. After all --nobody ever travelled across the damn world to stay inside a room for three days without moving.    
  
So, Angela monitors the equipment and Jesse plays with the free matchbook provided by the hotel. Nobody uses matches anymore, but they’re sort of quaint, and it’s at least something to do. Angela has been vigilantly monitoring the power output of the recording device by the window for hours, now, and it’s getting old.    
  
“Y’wanna play a game or somethin’, to pass the time?” He asks her, rolling onto his stomach.    
  
Angela doesn’t look up. “The time will pass either way.”    
  
Jesse sighs, and tosses the matchbook over his shoulder onto the bed. “But it might make it pass faster.”    
  
She still doesn’t remove herself from the task she’s engaged in, even though they’re not expecting the drop anytime today, and even though there’s no need for her to be watching so carefully. “Do you play games when you’re on crucial ops with the rest of Blackwatch?” She asks him, a little haughtily. Jesse just laughs.    
  
“Sure do.” He grins, impudently. “Got a whole bunch of ‘em for situations jus’ like this.”    
  
Angela’s head raises from the screen she’s looking at to the window, looking beyond to the vast, shimmering city, painted all gold in the sunset. “I’m quite entertained, thank you.”     
  
Jesse glares at the back of her head briefly and takes his pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket. “Suit yourself.” He says, and opens the carton up boredly. Free of base, he doesn’t have anybody breathing down his neck or confiscating his property, and he feels liberated to all hell until he’s looking down at a single cigarette rattling in the carton.    
  
“Don’t light that in here.” She says, again, automatically, and Jesse sighs, clambering off the bed in a huff, going over to the balcony door, but halted by her speak again, finally looking up. “If you’re so desperate for something to do, why don’t you order some food to the room.”    
  
He thumps the side of the door very gently in a gesture of protest, groaning. “Oh, c’mon, Angie! Room service? You don’t wanna go an’ --an’ see what’s out there?” He lifts an arm and points to the great, golden vastness beyond, accents of red and pink leaving the view feeling warm to his soft sights, unseasonably.    
  
Angela sighs, again, brushing down her lap. “I don’t want to arouse any unnecessary suspicion.” She tells him, seriously.    
  
“What’s suspicious about dinner?” He asks her, incredulously. “I might never get to see this place again, an’ you don’t--”   
  
“We have another two days here.” She tells him. “Some of which will comprise being out there.”    
  
Jesse isn’t in the mood to argue with her. He knows --God, how he knows that she takes all of this very much to heart, and she wants to get it right and he doesn’t know the next time she’ll be on an assignment so important. But he had assumed -or, rather, hoped that the place would take her just like it’s taken him and she’d get swept up.    
  
But Angela doesn’t look swept up remotely. She’s planted firmly in her seat by the window, utterly unswayed. So he changes his tact, and put the empty cigarette carton on the table by her side to make a point.    
  
“I’m out of cigarettes anyhow.” He says, carefully, holding the last one between his thumb and forefinger to show her. “This’ll be my last.”    
  
Angela looks at it, and then him, and then goes back to her work, only adding, “I should hope it’s your last forever.”    
  
Jesse is sort of baffled into just standing there. He doesn’t want her to take it personally if he wanders off himself, but they’re going to be assessed as a unit, and not individually. Jesse knows he can handle the bossman chewing him out a little --hell, sometimes he gets a kick out of it. But it’d just about break Angela to be indicted, he knows. Reyes is one thing, but Jesse thinks Angela’s heart would about break if it were the Strike Commander doing the disciplining.    
  
She’s Overwatch, after all. She doesn’t answer to the bossman in the end. No, she serves a different god.    
  
Still leaning against the door, Jesse kicks his foot out a little and sighs. “Angie--...” he begins.    
  
She looks up, as if suddenly tired. “What is it?”    
  
Her tone is a little accusatory. Impatient. Jesse knows better than to waste his words. “I need to buy cigarettes, anyway.” He begins, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. “What’s the harm in picking up somethin’ on the way?”    
  
It’s gentler. Less insistent, and Angela bites her bottom lip slightly like she’s considering it. Her eyes are still down on the task at hand but she’s not looking deeply. Instead, thinking it over, and Jesse can rest assured in that he’s being heard out, at least. Her head cants to the slide a little, and she looks up at him eventually with these worried eyes that are too old to belong to her.    
  
“Jesse.” She protests, weakly. “What if something happens? What if--”   
  
He laughs despite himself. “Oh, what’s gonna happen?” He asks her, genially. “I’ll be there an’ back. Won’t ask no questions, or stop to see any sights. It’ll be a real in-an’-out job.” He does his best to look earnest, just like her, holding her gaze without any confrontation in his look.    
  
Angela isn’t exactly convinced. “I don’t know.” she says, slowly. “Jesse, this place is dangerous--”   
  
“I’m dangerous, too.” he says, without thinking, and then watching her face wrinkle derisively. It’s not helping his argument anyway, so he raises a hand and continues. “There won’t be no danger, I promise. I’ll be quicker’n all hell. Won’t even stop to take pictures.”    
  
Angela turns where she’s sat, and fumbles for a few second before twisting again with the travel guide in her hands, thumbing through it before offering it out to him. “It says there’s a ramen store nearby.” She says, carefully. “Just around the corner, in fact.”    
  
Jesse narrows his eyes slightly. He can tell her game already. She’s being purposefully conditional, and he knows that she’s not negotiating, either. “What about the cigarettes?” He asks her, as a last resort.    
  
Angela shrugs. “If there’s something on the way, then by all means.” She smiles, very slightly, thinking she’s won. “If you go by the route in the book, it shouldn’t take longer than ten minutes.”    
  
Jesse shakes his head. “What’re gonna do, time me?”    
  
“I might.” She says, blandly, and it makes him laugh again.    
  
“Anybody’d think y’don’t trust me, Angie.” he says, easily, throwing a hand over his chest. “Hand t’God, I’ll jus’ get the food an’ some smokes an’ come right on back.” He knows he’s lying the moment he says it --already formulating excuses as to why he’ll have to take the long way, or maybe the store is closed and he’ll just have to pick up something else from somewhere further into the city.    
  
Angela doesn’t seem to see it. She’s centered far too much on the notion of trust and goodness, and Jesse would feel bad to cheat her if the circumstances were different. What is it the bossman is always saying when he’s in deep with the Strike Commander? ‘It’s better to seek forgiveness than ask permission’, and Angela seems pretty forgiving.    
  
She tils her head again like it pains her to say anything either way, and then reaches behind her again. Outstretching her hand, he sees foreign currency there and has his answer.    
  
“Thankin’ ya.” Jesse doesn’t wait for her to say anything, and takes it as gratefully as he can without snatching. He turns heel gleefully and gets halfway across the room. Halfway is better than he was anticipating, to be fair, and then her voice is all soft and awful in that way that makes him feel guilty enough to listen to her.    
  
“Jesse.” She says, so gently that it’s criminal. “This is my first time in the field. I --I really want this to be a success.”    
  
And Jesse turns back to look at her, trying his best to look earnest and sincere when he nods. “You worry too much, Angie.” He says, easily. “C’mon; we’re professionals. What’s gonna  _ happen _ ?”    
  
-   
  
To his credit, Jesse does go to the ramen store nearby.    
  
And to his credit, Jesse finds cigarettes on the way and it all takes less than ten minutes. He just doesn’t head back right away.    
  
How can he? Away from the sidealleys and no longer hidden from the majesty of the city, he finally gets to see it --and see it he does. He stands there, basking in the last of the sunset, in the wide, clean street of the main square, breathing in the deep and rich air that’s as crisp and clear as his lungs can handle and wondering how Angela can be content at all.    
  
The city had looked beautiful enough from their window, but this? Jesse’d let the bossman chew him out a good few times before he’d ever regret this.    
  
Alone, he feels at ease. Angela isn’t there to tug on his sleeve and he can smoke all he wants as he surveys the place. And what a place. Jesse’s never seen buildings like these, with their upturned roofs and elegant touches of colour. Never seen sliding screen doors and colourful silks on long strange gowns worn by men and women alike. He sees carved accents of dragons on the wood of some important doors and recognises the symbol from the dossier. Shimada, he recalls, and steers clear of wandering too much by places where the symbol repeats itself.    
  
The day is warmer than he has anticipated, and every now and then, a breeze lifts a few cherryblossoms from their branches and flecks his vision is vibrant and beautiful pink. He finds himself in the shadow of that great tower he’d spotted upon arriving and wanders around absently, watching birds, and eventually buying a drink from a local vendor.    
  
Jesse doesn’t speak a damn word of japanese. He just bows his head like he remembers being told to when he makes eye contact with the old woman in the store and gives her more money than the can could possibly be worth. He bows again in a small movement when she gives him change, and wonders if Angela would be proud.    
  
He settles on a bench nearby as the food cools in the bag he carries, staring up at the darkening shades of blue beyond the pagoda and the lights that are eventually brightening up the descending dark. Small, brown speckled birds perch on the rooftops and peck at nothing, but remain quiet.    
  
It’s dark enough that he thinks maybe he should head back, rising from the bench easily and arching his back appreciatively It’s yet to feel cold to him, here. The breeze is occasionally brisk, but never bitter, and Jesse wonders how the place looks covered in snow, or how much more vibrant the city looks in summer. It isn’t fair that Angela wants to shackle him to the mission. It isn’t fair of the bossman to give him these glimpses of beauty that won’t be his to peruse freely for another twenty years, like table scraps to a hungry mutt.    
  
He takes the alley he’d seen before, where more shops are still lively and bustling, the sound of japanese strange and amazing to him and the store lights bright and fascinating. Jesse doesn’t even recognise some of the foods, and much less the names of the stores that he passes. All he recognises is the prestige of them, closing to fancier, larger buildings that are sealed shut to the street.    
  
Inside are folks in rich, beautiful colours eating delicate, fancy foods that Jesse also can’t name, and it makes him all the more ready to get back inside and face Angela’s wrath, if only to get to eat.    
  
He continues to peer inside the windows as he walks down the alley, if only to punish himself. He wonders if there’s any possibility of spending one night of the trip inside one of those fancy buildings. Or if he’ll just have to wait until he gets his freedom. Jesse can’t picture himself any older than he is. Never thought he’d get this far, really, but to be --jesus, forty or so, one day, and to be greying and wiser and to be one of those folks sitting inside and eating to him is a very strange idea.    
  
He’s never really pictured his future before, even if the bossman yells at him for it half the damn time. It’s not something Jesse can think about, on base, in a communal room surrounded by the beds of other man that get re-listed every other day. There’s a stasis to everything there.    
  
But here, in Hanamura? Jesse doesn’t know why, but he can see himself aging here. He can see his future, in the bars and restaurants, skipping stones on the river and wandering the streets in the lull of the day.    
  
That’s what he’s thinking when he passes by the further of the restaurants, going to look in and finding --of all things, a window that’s not a window. Illuminated from the inside, and filled with water. Decorative corals swirl from the sand in the bottom in gentle pinks and pastels, and Jesse thinks they’re fascinating enough until he sees a flash of deep, ocean blue.    
  
The long, proud body of a fish passes idly by, and when he notices one, a few more begin to appear before his eyes, swimming there passively, unaware entirely of their beauty. Jesse doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything living that glows like that --like some sort of gem or diamond or something, shimmering and opalescent. He moves a hand before he can help it, tracing along the path of the largest fish: the first one he’d spotted, dark as the highway at night and ignorant to him.    
  
The glass is cool beneath his fingertip, and as he traces a perfect oval, the skool parts suddenly, the blue fish even darting behind a sand-coloured coral, giving Jesse a sudden and perfect view of the restaurant's interior.    
  
A fishery, he realises, intelligently. That’s what the window is signifying. Only now, seeing the plates of elegant seafood and rather less elegant fish being served by staff who plié and pirouette, does he make the connection. The food is every bit as colourful as the fine silk of it’s patrons or of the fish in the window, neatly presented in small but plentiful portions. Jesse watches in fascination as customers make elegant and precise movements with their chopsticks and the very idea of it baffles him.    
  
His view is obscured again, for a moment, by the large blue fish making another slow sweep across the tank, suddenly unafraid, and Jesse watches it pass the space between the two tallest corals before something else catches his eye.    
  
Not something. Someone.    
  
Jesse sees green, at first, a flash of a dark, royal shade that moves in a flourish as the person beyond the window lifts an elegant arm. One hand reaches behind the head, without looking, and finds the end of the simple braid that’s tying their hair. Even that, in the light, shines like silk, long and thick --all the lovelier when the ribbon keeping it together is pulled with a simple tug.    
  
Suddenly the corals and fish that dazzled him seconds before are secondary --a distraction, even, as he watches, entranced. The green of the sleeve catches the light again as Jesse watches the braid unravel into a dark, brownish black even more opalescent and magnificent than any of the other colours he’s seen in the city.    
  
He doesn’t think he’s ever seen the back of someone’s head look pretty before. It seems silly to him --and yet, he watches, transfixed, and then suddenly,  _ he’s _ being watched, too.    
  
The head turns, and he sees the tip of a sharp nose, first, before a pair of eyes, darker than the ocean’s floor and the highway at the night and anything else Jesse’s seen so far, fix upon him instantly. The gaze is precise, too, undistracted by the passing fish and the parting layers of glass, going straight to Jesse, who is, by all accounts, staring. His mouth might be open, too, slightly, he isn’t sure. He doesn’t feel aware of himself.    
  
He doesn’t even think --only holds the look he’s being given with a sort of quiet awe. A pale gold fish hurries past and distracts his vision for a slight second before he looks back.    
  
There, the other man is still looking at him, looking --scandalised? Vexed?    
  
Jesse is too taken by the high elegance of the man’s cheekbones, and the darkness of his eyes to wonder if he’s violating some cultural custom by staring so brazenly. He can’t look away at all. Even his hand tenses against the class, just to be certain it isn’t some illusion, or a fever dream.    
  
All the while, the man is still looking at him with this question to his gaze, and Jesse doesn’t know what to do at all, so he does the only thing he can. He smiles.    
  
For a moment, the other man’s confusion seems to grow, his lips parting briefly as if to question, but the longer he looks at Jesse, the more certain his gaze becomes until instead, he looks mildly bewildered, searching for something in Jesse’s face or gait. All the while, Jesse continues to smile, too taken to even think of doing anything else.    
  
Eventually, the other man tilts his head, at a genuine loss, it seems. He smiles, too, the faintest of smiles, more in his eyes than on his mouth.    
  
But Jesse sees it, all the same.    
  
Another flash of colour disrupts his vision as more fish swim past. Jesse blinks, and takes a step to the right to try to find the other man again. He gets intermittent glimpses of those dark eyes between the school, and by the time it passes, his mouth is open to say something, practically.    
  
But anything he could say is silenced as he witnesses the other man, still staring at him, wave over a large, brooding figure before he gestures to the glass, where Jesse is visibly, staring in haplessly. He thinks the worst, then, realisation only setting in as he realises the darkness and the hour past. Recalling Angela’s delicate, cautionary words: ‘ _ I don’t want to arouse any unnecessary suspicion’ _ .    
  
It might be a little late for that.    
  
-   
  
“Ten minutes.”    
  
Jesse stays by the door, like a cornered animal.    
  
The cold, empty bag is at his feet --evidence, and Angela surveys it with this tight, unbridled look of betrayal. It’s all over her face and her posture. Her voice sounds like she could break to a shout at any second, but Jesse doubts she will. No, he thinks she’ll cry instead, and that’s all the worse. That’s why he stays, very much withdrawn, very much unable to justify himself, or move, or speak.    
  
So much the better; Angela does the talking for him.    
  
“You were gone more than an hour!” She says, advancing on him with a single step, her face all fraught and worried. “I --I didn’t know what to do. What if --what if something had happened to you?”    
  
It’s a cruel trick, he thinks, putting a hand over his chest like he wants her to know he’s sincere, this time. “Nothin’ happened--”   
  
“But what if something did?” Despairing, Angela leans heavy on the wall and bites her bottom lip. She takes in a sharp, knifelike breath. “I don’t know how you run these things usually, but clearly, it isn’t with caution.” Her hand comes up to her face to cover her mouth, and she looks at him again with renewed concern. “Don’t you understand where we are? This city is owned by a yakuza, and they --they won’t exercise restraint just because you wanted to see the sights!”   
  
If he weren’t looking at her feet, then, still not ready for her gaze --if he’d heard those words at any other time, he’d have sworn they were the Strike Commander’s, and not hers. Maybe that’s why he feels so terribly defensive, all of a sudden.    
  
“Now, ju’s calm down a second, awright?” He says, raising his hand from his chest in defense. “I can handle myself, Angie --it’s not like--”   
  
“This isn’t just about you!” She says, sounding somehow angry, despite the softness of her voice. “Do you have any idea how much this matters?”    
  
Jesse bites back a terrible remark before he can make one. Angela isn’t cut from Blackwatch cloth, and he can’t tell it to her like it is, because she won’t be able to hear it. He has to talk around it, and he does, huffing impatiently. “I get that this is important to ya, but y’gotta learn to trust me, for god sakes.”    
  
Angela swallows thickly and coughs out, “After you just lied to me?”    
  
“Jesus , Angie!” His impatience gets the better of him. He hears his voice raise. “Maybe if you’d quit breathin’ down my neck for one hot second--”   
  
She doesn’t shrink away from it, biting back in a smaller, hurt voice. “Well, perhaps if you acted like a professional for one ‘hot second’, I wouldn’t have to--”   
  
“You don’t hafta do anythin’!” Jesse hisses, suddenly, losing the last of his desire to spare her feelings. “You were only assigned to this goddamn op because you don’t have no field experience. You think--” He stops to huff out a breathless laugh. “Y’think I need you to tell me how to do my job?”    
  
Angela says nothing. She’s looking down at her feet, slumped in a way that signifies not defeat, but withdrawal. Jesse hasn’t won, unless his victory is in hurting her, and he doesn’t even realise it until he makes matters worse.    
  
“Truth is, you can come back here any time y’please.” He tells her, drawn to standing tall, certain of what he’s saying without really thinking about it. “But me? I’m bonded for the next twenty goddamn years, so excuse me for tryna make light a’ that.”    
  
Then, Jesse thinks he’s won. Thinks that he’s said his piece, and that there can’t be anything in the world that could make him regret speaking the truth. But that’s before he looks up at her, again, and sees her shrinking, timid posture, and the tremble of her lip like she’s going to pull her cruellest trick of all.    
  
Suddenly there’s no victory, and Jesse looks away, fearfully, unable to face her.    
  
But then Angela makes a terrible, pained little noise, and Jesse --fool of all fools, looks up, only to see her eyes, trembling with tears, flutter heavily, and her bottom lip tremble like she’s really going to cry. What a trick it is, too, because he drops his shoulders almost immediately, watching in terror for a few seconds before the guilt becomes too much.    
  
He takes a few gentle steps towards her, and reaches out with a tentative hand to her shoulder, murmuring, “Oh, Angie.”    
  
She sniffs, blinking heavily, looking away from him as if she’s ashamed to be caught like this. His touch isn’t resisted, and it’s easy enough to pull her closer towards his body so he can embrace her. It’s easier this way, Jesse thinks, because from where she’s buried in his shoulder, he can’t see her tears.    
  
“I’m sorry, Angie.” He tells her, conceding, muttering it against her hair uselessly. “I didn’t mean t’yell at ya.”    
  
Angela sniffs against his shoulder but otherwise says nothing, and Jesse can’t tell if that’s good or bad. No, for a few moments, she just remains, and he lets her be. He doesn’t say anything else: of the city, of the man he saw, or the long, elaborate route he took back to the hotel, petrified he’d turn a corner and see the large, hulking figure who had been pointed towards him.    
  
Eventually, Angela extricates herself with a hand on Jesse’s chest, and she looks up at him with these pink, sorry eyes that are almost in themselves, too much to gaze upon. “I just--...” She sighs, breathlessly, sniffing again. “I just want this to go well.”    
  
Jesse nods. He gazes at some bleak corner of the hotel room instead of her face just so he can stand himself.    
  
“It will.” He tells her, trying to sound certain, or hopeful, despite how he feels nothing beyond wretched. “I promise ya, Angie, it’s gonna work out jus’ great.”    
  
She nods, then, after a few hesitant seconds, and sighs once more. “I --I’ll call up for some food.” She says, giving him one last look before turning away, and crossing the room towards the phone. Her walk is small --not defeated, but anxious. Angela has never much liked conflict, he knows.    
  
To spare himself once more, he goes to the railed-off balcony and smokes the last of his remaining cigarettes. He looks out on the city, now plunged into darkness and lit up. It looks entirely different to him, now, like a city of stars, and it’s a welcome distraction from Angela in all of it’s glory.    
  
Jesse thinks to himself about Reyes, then. He thinks about what he’d have said if it were the bossman in that room, and not Angela. But there’s no arguing with Angela, and he knows it.    
  
He heard, once, that truly good, noble people, can’t continue yelling at someone if they start crying. Maybe next time the bossman is really cutting into him, he ought to start crying, too.    
  
-   
  
They’re not expecting any activity until another 12 hours at least, so they don’t take shifts on watch, that night.    
  
Jesse lies awake, on his back, with his eyes open. Barely a foot from his shoulder is Angela’s back, and she lies asleep on her side, her breaths even and quiet, her form unmoving. He swallows nervously and stares at the ceiling, a single moment in a single bed.    
  
Their cover, as it read in the dossier, was the illusion of romantic partners on a getaway, and when one of them was in the field, casing, they would politely explain that their partner wasn’t feeling well, and they had left them to rest.    
  
Of course, like all covers, commitment was required, and Jesse feels antsy and boxed in to be in a bed with Angela.    
  
After a long while of restlessness, he rolls onto his side and fumbles on the night stand for some cigarettes, but remembers that he’d smoked the last one hours ago. He rolls back over, defeated, and looks back up at the plain white ceiling that’s almost lavender in the dark.    
  
The thought of the afternoon has been pressing behind his right eye like a headache, and, left to his own devices, jesse recalls it in detail without the guilt of Angela’s waking presence. He thinks of the pink of the cherry blossoms and the clean, wide streets. He thinks of the grand, cool shadow of Shimada Castle --how humbling it had been to be dwarfed by something so much older and greater than he had imagined.    
  
A giddiness fills him to recall the restaurant window he’d peered through. That giddiness swells to something more when he remembers the look of the man he’d seen through it. Jesse feels captivated even to remember it, the lustre of the man’s dark hair and how it had caught some fragment of the fading sunset light so wonderfully in the dim of the restaurant.    
  
Jesse hadn’t been staring idly, either. The other man had looked back. Had --had smiled, thereabouts He looks over at Angela again when she shifts in the sheets and remembers that he’s tethered to her. That she’s right; this isn’t a vacation. It’s just a snapshot. A postcard that Jesse’ll pin to his locker and look back on like a fading memory.    
  
Still, he thinks, wistfully, there are a few days let in the city, and if his infatuation if anything to go by on the first night here, he knows it’ll be memorable enough to tide him over. Than, maybe after he’s done with his contract, he can peer through the same window again and think back on what he can remember of the man he’d seen, sitting there, taking down his hair and staring back in this mesmerising, enigmatic way.    
  
It hardly seems enough, and despite himself, Jesse is left thumping his head against the headboard in the dark. He wishes things were different.  
  
He wishes they were. 


End file.
